“It’s beginning to feel like a cover-up”
She was the first female to rise to the second highest position in the male-dominated Department of Public Works and Highways.
From a parochial school where she finished her elementary and secondary education, she became a civil engineer, graduating from the University of the East.
She was thereafter employed at the DPWH, mentored by the eminent Teddy Encarnacion, promoted to undersecretary by Hermogenes Ebdane, and retained thereafter until the flood control scandals blew up because Congress abused its power of the purse, conscripting department officials, and fleeced contractors who collaborated in the racket of the century.
While honing her skills in the department, she improved her academic knowledge, tacking under her belt three masteral degrees in business and economics. She even has two doctorate degrees, one in business management and another in public administration.
With such a record, and as planning officer under several administrations, it is no wonder that she became the go to of her bosses, be it Mark Villar or Manuel Bonoan, when it came to crafting the department’s submission to the National Expenditure Program, also known as the President’s budget.
She devised the “science” of balancing the department’s capabilities while satisfying the demands of legislators who wanted projects for their districts, and devised what are known as “allocable” and “un-allocable.”
That was not an easy task, as through the years, and particularly the last three, the SOPs demanded by many insatiably greedy legislators who “owned” the funds they pre-negotiated in the NEP and those they inserted thereafter became bigger and bigger.
Her peer at the DPWH, one who oversaw operations, described her as the key gatekeeper of the public works budget. Both Villar and Bonoan trusted her to program and allocate the infrastructure funds including the now infamous flood control projects.
As a general rule and with very few exceptions, she had control at the DPWH level to “remove, include, add, deduct or modify insertions” in the National Expenditure Program for infrastructure projects, or so the undersecretary for operations who was promoted from district engineer to ASsec then USec during the time of Villar, testified before the Senate.
In effect, she was the resident encyclopedia of the DPWH, the one who knew too much.
She knew where the skeletons are hidden, and given her prodigious intellect, she could, if she wanted to, or if she was pressed to, confess by memory — who demanded how much among the officials higher in the government hierarchy, whether executive or legislative.
No, she did not deliver the goodies, nor divvy up the loot, that was for lower life among contractors and district officials, but she knew how the choice interstices of fat and lean meat would be apportioned, not necessarily innovating how the “collabs” of contractor and DEs concocted ghosts for accomplishments, with the public footing the entire bill.
But quizzically, after the USec Bernardo testified before the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, she was not called to affirm or refute the claims of her peer. She was invited to a closed door session before the ICI in September but was not called thereafter.
The ICI announced that she would testify on Dec. 15, but her lawyer now claims she did not receive invitation or summons.
Why it took the investigative commission more than two months to ask the one who knew much too much to appear and corroborate Bernardo’s affidavit is a puzzlement as well.
Now she is gone. We will not speculate upon the circumstances of her tragic death, to honor the request of her bereaved family.
Still, some government officials have come up with unnecessarily insensitive statements, including talk about running after the deceased’s assets even before any complaint has been filed against her person, and with accusations aired only in the court of public opinion.
A young congressman points to her as the keeper of the “secrets” ICI and the Ombudsman are trying to uncover, hard copy of which he took from her.
Again we ask, why did not the DOJ and its agencies, or DPWH officials themselves, take hold and preserve vital documents instantly through all these five months since “Mahiya naman kayo”?
Now they are scrambling all over the place, including defiling the deceased’s privacy. All talk and no action?
Or do all these show a pattern not of mere indifference, nor mere negligence, but precisely to protect the high and mighty?
How will Bernardo’s testimony now find corroboration? If Bonoan returns from abroad, will he corroborate Bernardo and incriminate himself?
It’s beginning to feel like a cover-up.
